THE DEVIL'S FLOODby Pearl R. Meaker ​GENRE: Cozy Mystery

Can a house vanish without a trace? What is the "super booze" that's available at clandestine drinking parties in Golden County? When mummified bodies show up at an archeological dig and a young man gets shot in a duel at a party, can Emory and Madison find the answers in the midst of a flood year?

No one ever found out what happened to Melvin Sutton. Like the house that had been provided to the Sutton family by the man he sharecropped for, Melvin had disappeared. What remained wasa legend and a lake bearing his name … and a very angry young descendent.
“What was that?”The cry brought me out of my reverie to see Ronnie McLaren leap to her feet.A second later we all felt a tremor.Jumping up, we all clumped together as if that would help against … whatever was happening.
“Look!” Nancy pointed toward the shoreline a few yards away from the pavilion. She then started clicking away at it with her Canon. The water’s edge twitched.I’d never seen water twitch like that. It did it again …
… And then it started to slide away from the shore. With an explosive roar and a huge plume of spray, the water ripped through the levee a hundred or more yards due south of where we stood.Within moments the water’s edge was ten feet lower and twenty feet further away.

Slightly quirky, always creative, Pearl R. Meaker has been an artist, singer and craftsperson her whole life. Although she's always had stories in her head, they didn't come out to play with others until the advent of home computers with their ease of making corrections and moving bits around.After several years of writing fanfiction in the world of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, she took a couple of writing courses and dove into writing original works of fiction, and The Emory Crawford Mysteries were born.When not playing with story ideas you can find Pearl playing with yarn either knitting or crocheting, doing other arts and crafts, bird watching and photographing nature, playing bluegrass fiddle (her husband plays banjo) or relaxing with her hubby on the sofa watching mystery shows on Netflix.Oh - and reading all sorts of books, but especially cozy and other types of mysteries!The books in The Emory Crawford Mysteries Series are reminiscent of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries, which is why Pearl has chosen to characterize her stories as "murder genteel."

Telling something unique/quirky about ourselves is an interesting proposition. Most of us, the longer we live, discover there are few truly unique people, thereby reaching the conclusion that we aren’t all that unique either.
This is okay as unique can either lead to persecution or being shown off as an oddity – and I don’t think most of us want either.
Quirky is easier.
Quirky is like noticing that both “unique” and “quirky” have “q’s” in them, making that combination of words a bit . . . well . . . quirky.
My quirk that I’m sharing is that I take a stuffed bear traveling with me. Not only does he travel with me, as in seeing the inside of various hotel rooms, he even goes sightseeing with me.
3B – short for Billy Boyd Bear (and yes, there’s another story there) – is an 18 inch size Build-a-Bear who was adopted by me at one of their stores in the Chicago metro area.
His biggest excursion was with my daughter and I on our trip to England and Scotland in 2005 to attend the Tolkien Society’s conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the complete publication of “The Lord of the Ring.” 3B went with us to the London Zoo (he wanted to see some of his relatives), to Trafalgar Square and the tower of London. He even attended the fabulous Edinburgh Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle.
My husband likes 3B as well. In fact he gave the lad his nickname. He has gone with Hubby and I to several bluegrass festivals and to Cave in Rock, Illinois which at one time was a pirate hideout on the Ohio River.
3B is a genial traveling companion who never complains about the bed or temperature in hotel rooms or the food in restaurants. The only complaint I ever heard was about having to ride in my backpack while in the UK. He grew weary of never seeing where we were going – only where we’d been.
If you’d like to see some photos of 3B on his adventures to Cave in Rock, IL and the United Kingdom, you can find them here: https://www.pearlrmeaker.com/3b-s-adventures.html
And who knows, if we meet someday, maybe he’ll be with me at the book signing or conference. I know he’d love to shake paws with you.
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